Wow, time flies when you are in another country sorting shit out and having some fun. This last week or so has been a whole world of wow!
First up, and this is important, life is now so much better. I mean that in all honesty. Finacially, things are looking up, work wise things are exciting, home life is better than ever due to a combination of the first two, and it looks like myself and my wife will be renting a great flat for the rest of our time in Germany. Now lets try and break this all down.
I guess myself and Sam didn't begin to feel at home in Germany until one important event. Cutting our hair cut. Those of you are are aware of us more personally know that we do not have 'regular' hair cuts. So having our hair cut as we want is a big deal. And yet it happened. The guy who cut mine owned the barbers. He and his employee knew English well enough to understand what we wanted, and were quite used to English people wanting more interesting hair cuts. Be they students, or, because the barbers is located in the centre of Bochum, performers in the local hit musical sensation (obsession) 'Starlight Express' (Starlight Express, Starlight Express, STARLIGHT EXPRESS!). He also knew his anime well and so understood what I wanted. As for Sam's hair cut - wow. Put it this way, everytime she has gone for a cut in the UK the hair stylist always refrained from cutting her hair as short as she asked, always citing "Let's see how it goes this short and do it shorter next time", not realizing how quick Sams hair grows, meaning again they never take off as much as they should to match the expectations of last time. Well this time round - hack - the hair fell away and Sam got a edgy, ultra short, asymmetric hair cut. Plus to top it off the stylist was eager to tone Sam's hair to silver. Silver! Again something in the UK they always feared doing.
So yeah, a hair cut makes the world seem great. Especially as it was something you feared would be a right pain in the neck to get done right.
The next thing that has been going well has been my work. I am now back into programming in Fortran. Yeah you heard me. Fortran. Not heard of it because you work with Java, and fancy modern stuff.... well fuck you bucko! Fortran rules mathematical coding. It works. It's simple. And everything else in my field is written in that or C++. It's been a bit difficult at time getting back into it, remembering how to write print statements for files, how loops are called, and so forth. This is because SVL (the code I was working with previously) was like the bastard child of Fortran and C++. But I am now happily back in the zone. Plus my boss, Jorg, and I, are in the same zone with the ideas we are working on.
Work. It pays. And it will pay well. I finally got my tax card through, with the correct tax class (Being married and the other half not working is a boon) and also it has been applied to both my upcoming pay cheque and to the pay owed me for the previous month. Something I feared would not get applied properly in time, and so resulting in me getting over taxed (I get taxed some 30% or so, if I was single it would be almost 50%, and well emergency tax is even more). This has happened to my friend up in Hamburg so I was worried. Especially when you want to put down a deposit on a new flat that will let you keep pets.
Well that brings us to the housing situation. I have just signed a contract for a new flat. It costs more than most would pay. But it is worth it. Apparently we will be living in a posh bit of Bochum. But the place is fully furnished (no buying a kitchen for us - yeah read up on that one), has fully crockery etc, and is a warm rent (all bills, including internet). Plus we can keep our cats there.
The deposit though is a lot. But fortunately, the agency said we should sign for 6 months, pay that portion of the agency fee, and then pay the remainder (they take a fee based on how long you are renting, maxing out at a bracket for 10+ months, which is an amount equal to two times the monthly rent). Well paying out 3 months rent in one go, plus the depost (another month and a bit rent) was a lot (hence my fear of getting paid correctly).
Fearing the amount of money I had to find to pay in one go, I have been loaned some more from my mother and mother-in-law. So that was all the bases covered (especially as I had booked my wedding anniversary holiday back in October based upon budgetting assuming my correct pay and also getting the deposit back from our flat in the UK - I'll get to that).
But things have now all balanced out. I have got my pay now confirmed, money to pay for deposits, I also got the money from December advanced to me, and also the deposit back from the UK - a whole 2 months later!
Yeah that deposit. That has been the result of a series of emails, very frustrated emails, terse conversations, angry phone calls, and then finally a lame excuse from the landlord that they were waiting for the invoices back for cleaning the apartment. But they were willing to gives us back £600 pounds of the over £1000 deposit. Well thank fuck we got something back! And I have asked for the invoices as if they don't do so I can claim the whole lot back. So be careful when renting in the UK. Landlords there are cunts.
So about the new place. We will be living near the lake, and near the castle, Blankenstein (yeah for real!). It is far larger than where we are living now, and what we had in the UK (which was unfurnished). So we will have double the space (78 sqm). So in terms of money the new place is a steal and makes renting in the UK look like a joke.
So overall I can say I am more happy than I have been for quite a while. I have my wedding anniversary coming up (3 years) and I have a new home to look forward to. Work is a blast, and also I have a new rpg group in the works for Vampire. My sister has said that this is the honeymoon period, and that we will more than likely change our tune in another month or so. But I think that depends on the type of people you are. If you are typical, 'normal' types, then perhaps so. All the normal things are all changed when when you move. But if you are a rpg geek, computer nerd, science type, goth, you are more tied to niche sub cultures. Subcultures that between countries are in fact more similar. Due to this fact (and the fact that my work life is all in English) the culture shock has bee dampened by interacting with those that can guide us through the pitfalls.
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